The invention relates to a system for electronic imaging machine diagnostics, and more particularly, to a technique for analyzing the serial-parallel data transfer operation for such machines.
As electronic imaging machines such as copiers and printers become more complex and versatile in the jobs they can do, the need to process vast quantities of information becomes much more crucial. However, the necessity of providing sufficient memory space to process large blocks of data can become prohibitively expensive. This can be particularly important in transferring data between serial and parallel storage devices. On the other hand, minimizing memory capacity to save cost often results in slow and inefficient performance. Thus, techniques to achieve an appropriate balance between speed, efficiency, and economy take on greater significance. As the techniques to achieve an appropriate balance between speed, efficiency, and economy take on greater significance, likewise methods to analyze and diagnose such techniques must be provided to ensure satisfactory performance.
The prior art includes U.S. Pat. No. 4,630,269 disclosing a method for diagnosing malfunctions in a disk drive. A copy of a text pattern is stored in memory. A read-write processor translates the data to disk codes and writes them on diagnostic tracks of the disk. The disk codes are read, translated and compared to the original test pattern to determine any faults in the disk or in the path.
A difficulty with the prior art systems is the difficulty in providing serial to parallel and parallel to serial data transfer operations, and being able to adequately diagnose the operations. It would be desirable, therefore, to be able to transfer data serially between a serial tape and a parallel disk memory using parallel processors to keep up with an enormous quantity of data with a limited amount of memory.
It is an object, therefore, of the present invention to provide a method of serial to parallel and parallel to serial data transfer and being able to adequately diagnose the data transfer operations. Another object of the present invention is to transfer data serially between a serial tape and a parallel disk memory using parallel processors. Another object of the present invention is to be able to queue requests to read/write portions of a serial tape on a current-next basis using maximum tape bandwidth in order for the tape to run without stopping. Another object of the present invention is to be able to use multiprocessor capability to be able to test at the operational speed of tape to disk and disk to tape transfers while minimizing the required memory. Other advantages of the present invention will become apparent as the following description proceeds, and the features characterizing the invention will be pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this specification.